‘And Just Like That’ Season 3 Episode 11 Recap: “Forget About The Boy”

This week’s episode of And Just Like That is the penultimate episode of the whole series, as we’ve recently learned. Knowing that, and knowing that it’s leading into the finale of a franchise that so many of us love and have been frustrated with for the past few years, it feels like an odd setup where so many new and weird scenarios have been teed up. But also, now that Herbert Wexley’s comptroller election has come and gone, it feels like a natural end to the series, since that’s the dramatic arc we’ve all been waiting to resolve this whole time, right? (Just me?!)

Next week’s episode, one assumes, will have to not just make Carrie’s (Sarah Jessica Parker) next chapter feel satisfying – not like the romantic tragedy she herself has just churned out, which was a story that’s desperate for an epilogue, but the show will also need to resolve a few new things that have recently developed. Are Herbert (Chris Jackson) and LTW (Nicole Ari Parker) headed toward real divorce (not just sleep divorce) now that he can’t shake the specter of his election loss? Is Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) going to continue to be a grandma agent of chaos, meddling in Brady and Mia’s relationship until their baby goes to college? Will Charlotte (Kristin Davis) ever be at peace with Rock’s gender identity? Will Anthony (Mario Cantone) actually break things off with Giuseppe?

All of these new possibilities were introduced this week, in between Thoroughly Modern Millie performances and scenes with Jackie Hoffman as a grouchy pie baker who keeps it real. It’s now late fall, and as Thanksgiving approaches, Miranda is going to be hosting the meal at her new apartment – Brady is cooking – and everyone’s invited.

Now that Carrie has been unburdened by her relationship with Aidan, she naturally starts to reflect on her identity. Even though she’s finally started to decorate her huge new house, she’s starting to rethink whether she wants to even be living alone in this Gramercy palace. When she runs into her old neighbor Lisette, who has been subletting her old apartment and who invites her to a pre-Thanksgiving get together, Carrie jokes that she’s just there to get her old place back. (Eventually, when she sees what Lisette has done to the apartment, adding temporary walls to divide the space so it can be shared with a roommate, Carrie seems horrified and desperate to reclaim the place.)

All season, Charlotte’s biggest concern has been Harry, whose prostate cancer was a huge scare for their family, and now has become more of a “deez nuts” punchline. Most of Harry’s dialogue since he had his prostate surgery has revolved around swollen balls and limp dicks, and this week is no different. As he polishes the silver at home, he tells Charlotte it’s nice to “rub something that stays hard” and the jokes about Harry’s erectile dysfunction continue from there. Charlotte informs him that he doesn’t need to be polishing the silver anyway, because they’re going to Miranda’s for Thanksgiving, and, in a non-testicle-related actually funny observation, Harry says, “She probably makes her stuffing with white bread and has NPR on instead of football!”

He doesn’t want to go, but not just because Miranda supports public broadcasting, it’s really because ever since his diagnosis, his primary goal has been to just survive till Thanksgiving and enjoy the holiday alone with his family. Once Charlotte hears this, perhaps Harry’s first real admission about his fear of dying, she bails on Miranda’s meal. For as long as Harry’s been ill, he has never expressed this much vulnerability about his own mortality and Charlotte decides to make him the priority for the holiday.

But Harry is not Charlotte’s only concern this week. She’s also realizing, now that her non-binary child Rock is starring as Millie in the high school musical of Thoroughly Modern Millie, that she has some dormant feelings about not raising the feminine daughter she always dreamed of. Seeing Rock in a dress, wearing makeup stirs something in Charlotte, who has always been supportive of her child’s identity, and now she doesn’t know how to feel. (“It’s like seeing who Rock would be if…” Charlotte says, not sure how to finish her sentence, until Miranda adds, “If they still identified as a Millie?”)

What she’s feeling is grief, not at Rock’s identity so much as the fact that she’s mourning the expectations she had for her kid. The problem is that, this is Rock’s life and identity and Charlotte can’t really express her feelings of sadness and confusion out loud. Once again this season, she’s forced to bottle up her emotions. It really does feel like a strange plot twist to throw at us at the end of the series, with only so much time left to thoughtfully resolve this.

Over in the men’s dressing room at Bergdorf’s, while Anthony is helping Giuseppe pick out sweaters, Giuseppe gets down on one knee to propose. Anthony is shocked by this seemingly spontaneous gesture but he says yes. While I do love their pairing on its surface, it’s been plagued with some issues. The biggest is, of course, the disappointing Patti LuPone arc as Giuseppe’s disapproving mom, but also, the show has all but ignored Anthony and Stanford’s relationship – of course Willie Garson’s death has left a void in this show in many ways, but when it comes to Anthony, the lack of acknowledgement that Stanford the character is still alive (and living as a monk) just seems odd. Perhaps that’s one reason Anthony eventually confides in Carrie that he’s actually got second thoughts about the engagement.

If there’s anything I truly hate on a show like And Just Like That, it’s broad farce (like, say when Carrie tells Miranda that Richard Burton and not Harry is the cancer patient), but this season seems to be filled with people turning real, serious situations into farcical moments. Last week, it was Miranda, pretending to want a haircut from Mia, the woman pregnant with Brady’s baby, and not revealing her own identity until it was too late. This week, it felt like Miranda was headed down the same path again when she announced that she secretly invited Mia to Thanksgiving without telling Brady. (It turns out that this moment is not ultimately played as a farce so much as just a really bad decision on Miranda’s part, because when Brady learns what she’s done, he flips out on her in front of Joy and Joy’s dogs. (“She told me her mother had blocked her on Facebook and she has nowhere to go for the holiday,” Miranda says and I call bullshit because there is no way Mia, a 20-year-old, is using Facebook.) Brady angrily tells Mirands, “You are crazy, inviting some random girl I got pregnant to Thanksgiving!” which is a sentence that packs a punch in so many ways: it’s bad enough that he’s calling Miranda crazy in front of Joy, but the casual dismissiveness of Mia seems a little cruel, too. And Joy, witnessing all of this, is definitely registering that this situation is complex and awkward for her to be a part of.

Of all people, Seema seems to have entered into the most stable situation of all. Even though Adam is a deodorant-hating vegan whose last name is Karma, she tells him she loves him. And she means it! He actually says it first, and the show doesn’t make this moment a WHOLE THING by creating drama around whether or not she’ll say it back, she simply tells him she loves him, too. Adam then tells Seema he wants her to meet his sister (looking forward to this casting choice) the following Thursday — that’s Thanksgiving, but Adam doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, so it’s just a Thursday hang. (So that also means Seema’s a no for Miranda’s meal, that guest list is getting smaller and smaller.)

Somehow, Herbert Wexley has become the most loathesome character on this show, I don’t know how or when or why, but he has completely worn out his welcome and now I’m actively wishing for LTW to sleep with Man Marian between now and the next episode. Herbert lost the comptroller race weeks ago but he’s still feeling like a failure (it doesn’t help that every bit character on the show keeps reminding him of his loss: “I can’t believe you lost to that community activist in bad shoes,” one of their fellow school moms says.). But this isn’t just a man feeling sorry for himself – he’s actively pushing his loved ones away. When Lisa tries to make him feel better by telling him, “I have never been prouder to be your wife,” to which he responds, “Not helping. Go to work, please.” Yes,off to work, Lisa, to the strong, comforting, papaya-nourished arms of Man Marion!

Carrie had assumed that she was done with her novel about The Woman, but when she turns it in to her editor, she learns she is not done at all. That’s because, by letting The Woman end up alone, the ending reads as an unsatisfying romantic tragedy. “In 1846, when this takes place? A woman alone at the end would be a tragedy, would it not?” her editor asks. The past few episodes have caused Carrie to start to wonder what the definition of a happy ending really is. When she and Duncan discussed the last chapter of her novel, he begged her to let The Woman live, a suggestion meant literally, as in, “don’t kill her off at the end.” And yet, when she wrote that ending and simply let The Woman’s story end with her being happily, unpredictably alone, it read as a tragedy. We all know The Woman is just a stand-in for Carrie, and now she’s forced to confront this idea of solitude – in relationships, in a big, empty home – and figure out how to turn this ambiguous ending into one where, despite the fact that she she’s alone, she lives.

Stray Thoughts from And Just Like That Season 3 Episode 11:

• Victor Garber, back again as Mark Kasabian, gallery owner and, now we discover, father of a reluctant theatre tech nerd.
• So for weeks, this show has overtly shown us what a theater queen LTW’s son Henry Wexley – from his Les Mis karaoke to helping Rock learn to tap dance. And this week, just as he’s billed as the male lead in the high school play, he’s not even in the episode to perform on stage? What gives? (I mean, I understand that half the episode was already just a Thoroughly Modern Millie performance, but it still feels strange that he was left out.)
• So… is Carrie going to meet a handsome widower next week, just like The Woman in her book?

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.